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Following up from the December Racial Justice Workshop, organizers from the People of Color Caucus have joined with the Rank and File Committee (of the Labor Outreach Committee) for an exciting event on how racism has been essential to Wall Street’s historic roles in the US economy, and how workers of color have fought back throughout. Ai-jen Poo (Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance) will lead us through this history, highlighting the key roles that workers of color have played in the US Labor Movement, even when they had to fight racism within the movement.

The second half will be a panel discussion with rank and file leaders from New York’s labor struggles and how Occupy Wall Street can help them win against the corporations that profit off of their labor: Sotheby’s Workers (Teamsters, Local 814), Domestic Workers United and others!

How can OWS support those on the front-lines of the fight-back against the corporate attack? Join us to help OWS and the Labor Movement build together!

The last two months the struggle of cleaners has been in the centrepiece of social movements in the Netherlands. The cleaners are among the first who are affected by the economic crisis in the Netherlands. After transportation workers, post workers and employees in subsidised jobs, the cleaners are facing wage cuts.
The budget cuts in the cleaning expenses by companies such as Philips and organizations such as the ministries and the universities directly affect the working conditions of the employees in the cleaning sector. The cleaning companies, in order to maintain their profits in the same level as before, they increased the workload and worsened the working conditions. Although most employees in the Netherlands are entitled to a paid sick-leave, the companies deny this right for the cleaners. To make things worse, the companies had eliminated the pay rises and their contribution to social security for temporary workers.
As everybody else the employees in the cleaning sector demand a decent life and proper working conditions. As everybody else they have the right to fight for their demands. Therefore hundreds of them are on strike for 40 days now. After 4 months of discussions, 7 rounds of negotiations, hundreds of small actions, 9 big demonstrations in several Dutch cities, they decided to go one step further. On Monday, 27th February, more than 2.000 cleaners, together with hundreds of students who support their struggle, occupied Utrecht University.
Today they do the same in the VU University of Amsterdam and they have our absolute support.
We call all the working people, youth and unemployed persons to show their solidarity and support the occupation of the cleaners in order to gain their demands.
They fight for respect in the context of a systemic global crisis that deteriorates the lives of millions of people.
They fight for better working conditions and for a better life.
They fight also for us! We should fight with them!
Solidarity to the cleaners. They will win!

After a few weeks of protests and negotiations, cleaners in The Netherland went on strike on the 27th of February. Yesterday, they occupied the VU University of Amsterdam with the help of dozens of activists with the intention of doing an ongoing sit-in.

The contractors of the cleaning companies such as Philips, the ministries and the universities proceed to gradually cut back on cleaning expenses. The cleaning companies accommodate these cuts by increasing the workload extremely and worsening the working conditions. The cleaners do not ask for much, just for respect and the appreciation of their job, for paid sick leave and a normal workload.

Yesterday, nice events were organized, people talked to the students. The union of university employees supported the strike and they tried to link the struggle of the cleaners with the problems of the university personnel. At the end of the day, after meeting some of the demands (6 fired workers were given another 6-month contract and the university will send a letter to the cleaning companies saying that they support the demands of the cleaners), the union of the cleaners decided to end the sit in.

Given the willingness of people for action and given the way that the cleaners themselves presented their struggle (with demands that included solidarity with the personel of the university), for many of the participants and supporters of the strike this was a rather shocking experience. Actually, there was no real democratic procedure followed for the end of the action: the decision was taken in 2 seconds and then the cleaners left the area within 20 min.

This is an invitation to join our Inter-Assembly Newswire project. It’s being run by team members from Occupy/15M/PAN in the USA, Spain and London. Please read the following information, and ask your Assembly’s external and international communications workgroups (or equivalent) to subscribe and participate.

There are two aspects to this project:

(1) the global email list and

(2) the decentralised blog-link, or global newswire.

We are excited about the newswire which allows you to ‘news tag’ your local blog posts for people to follow and receive your news at the global level. Both platforms are designed to maintain local assembly autonomy while also establishing clean lines of inter-assembly communication, and are open-source so can be utilised on other sites....

Yesterday, 60,000 marched on Madison to mark the one-year anniversary of the passage of Governor Scott Walker's drastic dismantling of collective bargaining rights for public employees. Last year, Walker's attacks on labor rights sparked massive protests that saw hundreds of thousands occupy the Wisconsin capital building. Their actions prefigured Occupy Wall Street and inspired countless others to take a stand against economic inequality, political injustice, and the tyranny of the 1% enforced through politicians and banksters alike.

This is just one example that people across the globe are actively resisting attacks on the 99%. This year has already seen the largest-ever strike on record in India, hundreds of thousands marching for democracy in Bahrain, general strikes in Montreal and Spain where students once again occupied public space in protest of the austerity measures and spending cuts being enforced by the European banking elite, massive uprisings in the streets of Moscow, and more. Even in the United States, the movement grows. The corporate media claims that Occupy's strength is waning, but they are merely in denial. During the coldest months of this year, the United States has already seen more revolutionary momentum than it has in decades...

Bank of America has stolen millions of homes. It's time to turn the tables! Watch a crew of Occupiers set up their new living room in a New York City branch of Bank of America, which is being rented by the taxpayers at a cost of $230 billion in bailouts from the U.S. government:

The occupation we witnessed at the Vrije Universiteit (VU University) in Amsterdam this past week was no ordinary university occupation. But that’s what you get when you combine the energy behind the longest-running sector-wide strike in Dutch history since 1933 with the channeled frustration of employees and students about the destructive neoliberal reforms underway at their university. The result is a new breed of radical action that works.

Over a period of two days, the central hall of the university’s main building was taken over by a few thousand striking cleaners and their fellow occupiers. Upon arrival, the main lecture hall was stormed and held, while striking cleaners and co-occupiers — like my university colleagues and I — visited students in their classrooms, explaining the purpose and goals of the occupation. The central reclaimed spaces would soon become both the base for the cleaners’ collective decision-making assembly, as well as the location of a slew of speeches and activities in solidarity with the cleaners’ struggle....

Unlike the tea party, the Occupy movement hasn't involved itself much in elections. But that hasn't stopped a slew of progressives and political outsiders from capitalizing on the movement's energy. Here's a rundown of 10 electable House and Senate hopefuls who, one way or another, have made Occupy part of their campaigns:

Quote:

Alan Grayson (Florida): Nobody running for Congress has done more to side with Occupy Wall Street than the outspoken former congressman from Orlando. In October on Real Time with Bill Maher, Grayson destroyed conservative pundit PJ O'Rourke with a fiery defense of the movement. A clip from the segment now features in an Occupy-themed video that automatically plays on the Grayson campaign's homepage. Beloved by progressives for his voting record and willingness to go on the attack—he likened Dick Cheney a blood-sucking vampire and summed up Republicans' health care plan as "die quickly"—Grayson lost his reelection bid in 2010 but is attempting a comeback in Florida's new Democratic-leaning 9th Congressional District.

Prospects: Excellent. He's one of only three candidates whom the DCCC has named "Majority Makers," meaning that their races are top priorities.

Quote:

Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin): In 2010, the National Journal called Baldwin the most liberal member of the House. She earned kudos in November from the Occupy crowd for sponsoring a resolution opposing any government deal that grants criminal immunity to banks. "When the conventional tools for expressing yourself...are closed and your voice is cut off," Baldwin has said of Occupy Wall Street, "what else is left but to use the possibility of standing on a soap box and screaming to anyone who will listen?"

Prospects: Excellent. She is the likely Democratic nominee to replace the retiring Sen. Herb Kohl.

"...unless we start to see the world and our role in it with new eyes, we will be unable to alter the structure of the present system Withal, it is imperative to be in full possession of one's humanity when facing the desperate, dehumanizing forces of an order that has grown ever more brutal in direct proportion to its rapidly declining purpose and legitimacy.."

OCCUPY: Infiltration of Political Movements is the Norm, Not the Exception in the United States.Part II

On March 6 members of an off-shoot of Anonymous, Lulzsec, were arrested as a result of an FBI informant, Sabu, whom the media describes as a Lulzsec leader. The six arrests were for people allegedly involved with Lulzsec which became known for targeting Sony, the CIA, the U.S. Senate, and FBI, as well as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal.

Exactly one year ago to the day of the arrests,The Guardianpublished an article headlined,“One in four US hackers 'is an FBI informer.'” The article described how the FBI had used the threat of long sentences to turn some members of Anonymous and similar groups into informants. It also described how the group was open to infiltration. OnDemocracy Now,Gabriella Coleman,a professorat McGill University who is an expert on digital media, hackers and the law, said: “There had been rumors of infiltration or informants. At some level, Anonymous is quite easy to infiltrate, because anyone can sort of join and participate. And so, there had been rumors of this sort of activity happening for quite a long time.”

Zizek’s ideas are echoed by – Canadian activist, author and publicist, Naomi Klein in an interview in Solutions an online Journal for a Sustainable and Desirable Future. Klein states that the Occupy Movement has been a game changer, that it has opened up space to put more radical solutions on the table and she says that the experience of seeing these groups of young people putting their radical ideas on the table, and the country getting excited by it, has been a wake up call for a lot of people.. She concludes that it has challenged the sense of what is possible. [5]

University of Amherst Professor Emeritus Richard Wolff, one of many Profs who have spoken out in favour of the Occupy Movement, in the US stated: As the Occupy movement keeps developing, it seeks solutions for the economic and political dysfunctions it exposes and opposes. For many, the capitalist economic system itself is the basic problem.

He also noted that the students who were occupying Harvard and hundreds of other colleges and universities around the country were exploring two basic issues: i) how to restore the idea of the university and ii) how to imagine and create appropriate substitutes for capitalism. Both are key issues within the larger, national and international, Occupy movement....

The luxury Madrid prostitutes on strike sex with bankers until the credit flowing again to the real economy

The largest trade association of luxury escorts Madrid announced yesterday the beginning of a total strike and indefinite sexual services to employees of banks until they return to provide credit to households, SMEs and Spanish companies.

The idea of ​​this strike arose from the experience of CP Lucia one of the association's members, who for the wheel of the press sa recounted how excited one of his regular customers told him that, for many months, his only activity was to borrow hundreds of millions of euros of liquidity window of 1% of the ECB, and immediately invest that money in European debt and highly specialized products such as CDS and commodity hedge funds, with returns of between 3 and 7%, pocketing the difference. "-One day I got fed up and said: Enough is enough no? Go forgetting my pussy until you fulfill your responsibility to society. My client at first grumbled and threatened to get on the maintenance fees and transfers, but eventually backed off and three days later returned with a notarized certificate of having granted a line of credit to SMEs and a loan to buy a Citroen van a self-contained. This is how I realized that we could help the credit flowing again "...

"At mid-evening, on Saturday March 17, upon the six-month anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the NYPD initiated another brutal operation to expel OWS activists from the premises, and to discourage, in general, those who might venture attempts to exercise their right to free assembly and free expression across the whole of the city of New York, as winter proceeds into Spring.

In a police state, unjust actions by authoritarian bullies, operating at the behest of privileged bullies in power, act by caprice and will escalate their level of brutality by the degrees that the public at large reacts with support and indifference to the state's assaults on civil liberties and common decency.."

For the last two months, Occupy UC Davis has been blockading a campus branch of U.S. Bank. Now, in a victory for Occupy that potentially gives birth to a new movement tactic, U.S. Bank has capitulated and permanently closed the branch.

U.S. Bank has been a visible symbol on campus of the corporatization and monied corruption of education in part because, as The Aggie campus newspaper explains, “in 2010, all students were required to get new ID cards with the U.S. Bank logo on the back.”...

# This week in Occupy, we turned six months old - and law enforcement noticed, Occupy Seattle's Chase 5 was found not guilty, spring training for the nation's May 1 actions commenced, SXSW was #occupied and we couldn't stop watching this.

# The six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street on March 17 was marked by reconnection and celebration, which clearly angered law enforcement: 73 people were arrested in and around the movement's Liberty Square birthplace and five were arrested at Occupy L.A. on felony charges. The March 17 raid was followed up by a candlelight vigil in Union Square the next evening....

In 2011, Time Magazine called The Protester the person of the year. But a new law that was recently signed by President Obama very well might mean that won't happen again. Since the start of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, over 6,700 Americans have been arrested for taking part in demonstrations and this new law could raise those numbers significantly. Marina Portnaya gives us the latest on H.R. 347, the Trespass Bill.

The General Assembly resolution calls for a month of action, starting March 24 and leading up to Earth Day on April 22, to draw the Occupy movements across the country and around the world further into the struggle to protect the climate. “Earth Month,” which will target all fossil and nonrenewable fuels, is being spearheaded by a group from OWS called 99forEarth. The resolution also calls for “connecting the dots between the 1% and the destruction of the planet.” At one end of the chain are specific depredations on specific environments: “Our mountains in Appalachia are blasted; our drinking water in the northeast [is] threatened by fracking; our American heartland is charted for an oil pipeline; and our forests in the northwest [are] targeted for further deforestation.” Connect the dots and you find that the corporate destruction of the earth’s climate has been “financed by the 1%” and that a “small group of polluting businesses” have “hijacked our political system for their benefit.”...

The Occupy movement is about reclaiming a future for people who have had their life chances rubbished by three decades of global neoliberalism and austerity. But it’s not just about paycheck economics; the destruction of the climate and environment is an integral part of the neoliberal world order. The same corporations, banks and financial institutions that destroyed the economy are destroying the global environment. The struggle to preserve the earth and its atmosphere is, by necessity, a struggle against those forces....

The climate crisis is a global crisis, which will require global cooperation to solve. Without international agreement, if one country restricts corporate carbon pollution, global corporations will seek to move their production elsewhere. In a global economy, countries are likely to seek economic advantage by allowing higher levels of pollution. Fortunately, both Occupy and the climate protection movement are highly hooked up globally—the protests that linked Occupy and other economic justice movements on October 15 reached an estimated 1,500 cities worldwide, and 350.org has initiated globally coordinated demonstrations in every country except North Korea.

An economy driven to enrich the 1 percent cannot meet the needs of the 99 percent for a secure, sustainable future. We need a strategy to counter the threats to economic security and climate security by putting people to work to create a low-pollution, climate-friendly, sustainable global economy—what is sometimes described as a Global Green New Deal. It will require democratizing our economy so that we can direct our labor and our investment to sustainably meeting the needs of all people. It will require not just different policies, or even different structures, but a global society mobilized for change. A Global Green New Deal will ensure jobs and livelihoods for all, because it will take all the work—and all the creativity—we can muster.

In another sign of the Occupy movement's diversifying tactics and growing spring momentum, yesterday Occupy San Francisco liberated a vacant building owned by the Archdiocese of San Francisco and announced plans to establish a permanent occupation -- including a social center, shelter, and food bank -- on the site. The April 1st action began with a lively march from Union Square before arriving at the building just before 6pm. When they arrived, Occupiers who had already secured the building greeted the marchers with open doors.

The two-story building, located at 888 Turk St., soon filled with hundreds of exuberant Occupiers. Preliminary reports indicate that the Archdiocese has asked police not to take any action until the morning. However, the Occupiers are requesting help and numbers in case of any eviction attempt. If you are in the Bay Area and are able, please get down to the San Francisco Commune as soon as possible! Most recently (as of 1am Pacific time), police had surrounded the building with barricades to prevent supplies from getting inside. Occupiers have announced they will serve breakfast at 9am and are inviting everyone to join them!...

"This year 2012, marks the 200th anniversary of the Luddite uprising, when English textile workers smashed looms with hammers. Few words in the English language invoke such perjorative connotations as Luddite. It signifies the machine breakers, someone who opposed progress - and, thus, the capitalist project.

Today, two centuries later, the popular struggle against capitalism - a system involving not only commodification and the maximization of profits, but also imperialism, patriarchy, racism, hierarchy and sexual repression - draws inspiration from the Luddites.."

Are You With Me? (Louis Reyes Rivera 1945-2012) by Iva Rad and Martyna Starosta

This is a 10-minute film dedicated to freedom fighter Louis Reyes Rivera. Rivera was a member of the 1969 occupation of City College, which was led by students of color and won open admissions. He spoke to Students United for a Free CUNY at the AME Church in Harlem on October 27, 2011 before his death on March 3, 2012. We had the honor to film what was to become one of his last public speeches.

While not a 'homeless' program, this project does especially address the long term needs of house-free young adults occupying the urban Eugene environment. The young adult is a fast growing sector of the houseless population. Within this houseless sector there is a growing subgroup which might be called the 'house-free' group. While claiming the need and the right to assemble and associate, they disavow needing to be housed at all. They are not unhoused, they are house-free. Their grievance is the criminalization of their urban outdoor way of life. To reverse that plaint, this project recognizes them as 'cultural creatives' whose ongoing desire for a house-free experience has become an important harbinger to our urban society in middle-class descent. In light of the economic transition that's now begun we see the house-free young adult, having shed the conventional fantasy of the over-housed, as a valuable, even a crucial, asset to our civil society going forward.

This project also addresses a much greater challenge, that of our city's economy being over monetized and consumerist. In this regard this project proposes to begin stewarding and maturing the young and houseless experience into an educational commons devoted to the rapid infusion of restorative economies into our local communities, thereby meeting the greater need of having living, working examples of locally rooted economies available nationally. In this vision Eugene is underway to becoming a renowned eco-society, a hotbed for the social innovations that a deepening green future requires. The house-free are well positioned to pioneer this emerging commons-based economy and its way of life.

This project, being highly integrative and forward looking, offers an expenditure benign, culturally poised and politically unique direction to the homeless reintegration challenge here in our particular city. It is decidedly not about building a 'homeless' camp, it is about reclaiming and re-animating the commons and establishing a house-free transitional community upon it as a necessary first use of that commons. So, first things first: The OE Commons Project calls upon the City of Eugene to allow for the prompt recognition and steady establishment of a network of eight OE living demonstration campus sites throughout the city. Wherein each and every city ward will carefully select a permanent campus site through the agency of resident OE actionists within their own ward. These eight campus sites taken together are to be the (Occupy) Eugene Commons. The need to begin is appearing urgent....